


a several years' cruise

by gaby_z



Series: the world inverted [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Gen, Magical Realism, Vomiting, adam wakes the ley line before gansey comes to henrietta, aggressive foliage, gansey comes to henrietta to meet adam and see if his claims are real, not really or a lot but like there is mention so be warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 07:29:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18069167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaby_z/pseuds/gaby_z
Summary: gansey was only in d.c. for a weekend, but he had twenty four hours his family could spare him, and little henrietta, virginia was a mere two hours drive away. he could afford to check out this adam parrish's claims, no matter how unrealistic they seemed.





	a several years' cruise

**Author's Note:**

> title from mark twain's a connecticut yankee in king arthur's court. the full quote is as follows:
> 
> "You see, he was going for the Holy Grail. The boys all took a flier at the Holy Grail now and then. It was a several years' cruise. They always put in the long absence snooping around, in the most conscientious way, though none of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was, and I don't think any of them actually expected to find it, or would have known what to do with it if he had run across it."

gansey knew exactly who he was meant to be meeting even before the boy glanced up and said slowly, in a summer sun-warmed voice, “are you richard gansey?”

it was that he looked like the kind of person things had happened to, or maybe that something about the set of his shoulders suggested that he spent his time somewhere just off to the side, a step to the right of normalcy. it was that the air around him suggested that he had been taken from another time and place and edited without any particular skill into the mundane tableau that surrounded them. it was the way his head tilted, like an animal listening to an oncoming storm, the slope of his cheekbones and his deep-set eyes, somehow lighter than they should be, focused on something just out of the frame. gansey took his proffered hand-a good, strong grip, unfaltering, not too pushy.

gansey senior would be impressed.

“it’s actually just gansey. adam parrish, correct?”

“correct,” adam parrish replied, sounding a little like he couldn’t believe this was all for real. gansey was familiar with the feeling. he’d been familiar with it since he’d seen parrish’s reply to a posting on an online message board two weeks ago. parrish gestured to the to-go cup in front of him. “i ordered a coffee, i wasn’t sure if you would want anything.”

“oh, i ate already,” gansey reassured him, but the truth was that he had to be back in d.c. in twenty two hours and he wanted to waste as little of that precious time in this drab cafe as possible. “i’m sorry, it’s just that-well. would you mind if we-”

“oh, sure, we can get going,” parrish said, but he looked like he minded a little bit. he picked up his coffee and left a pile of change on the table where it had rested. it looked like more than a tip strictly needed to be, unless this was the east coast’s most expensive coffee shop. perhaps the coffee here was exceptionally good.

adam parrish came to a complete halt on the pavement when he saw the camaro. gansey didn’t rush him. proper appreciation of the pig was more than worth five minutes lost. “this is your car?” he asked, but he didn’t sound derisive or doubtful. he sounded like he minded gansey a lot less than he had only five minutes ago. gansey couldn’t help smiling.

“just wait until we get the beast on the road,” he promised.

they were lucky. the camaro was in a rare cooperative mood, and so adam parrish was treated to the pig in its finest form, terrible and loud and clanking and hulking and always seeming as though the second it stopped devouring tarmac it might never start again, only it did, each time its own miracle.

“how do you keep this thing running?” parrish shouted. laughter transformed his face, making it no less otherworldly, but turning the sharp angles of it temptingly inviting rather than distant.

“sheer power of will,” gansey called back. parrish shook his head, a different kind of disbelief now.

they reached the coordinates parrish had sent him days ago within half an hour. they had been driving through a wide empty expanse, but when they crested a hill the space in front of them suddenly filled with trees, thick and wild. parrish heaved a sigh at the sight, indicating that they should come to a stop a few yards from the tree line, then he stood to the side and watched, politely intrigued, as gansey sorted through the collection of tools he had brought with him-various dowsing rods, an emf reader, a cardboard box filled with digital recorders and maps and a slightly disappointing spirit box that he had bought and used only once, to minimal reward.

“i don’t think you’ll need much of all that,” parrish said, in the tone of a born and bred local who was watching a tourist embarrass themself and was trying very hard against their baser instinct to be kind about it. gansey was used to this treatment-he’d done this many times, and every supernaturally-inclined acquaintance he made on his travels had been firmly convinced that their pet phenomenon was the most fantastical thing he had seen or would ever see. he wondered at what point these exercises in discovering wonder had begun to feel rote. he let his face fall into his most genial smile.  

“i like to get hard numbers for my research. to compare with other cases and such. it shouldn’t interfere with your work, don’t worry.”

parrish shrugged.

it was true enough that from the account gansey had read two weeks ago, it didn’t sound as though dowsing rods would be necessary. he grabbed the emf reader and his journal, checked his coat pocket for a pen, slammed the lid of the trunk down with enough force that the latch took. “shall we?” he prompted.

parrish stuck his hands into the pockets of his cargo pants. it was a very genuine, _aw shucks_ sort of gesture. his eyelids fluttered closed, and he tilted his head up and to the side, like he was seeking the sun. he breathed like that for a moment.

“yeah,” he said, and then without another word he took off towards the forest.

it definitely was a fantastic specimen of a forest. not fantastic in the sense of bizarre or impossible, at least based on initial observation, but rather in the sense that everything about it was exactly what a forest rightfully should be. there was something lovely and rich about the air. the bird calls managed to sound exactly the way bird calls should, and the various greens and browns were all exactly the shades they should be, and the dead bits were all satisfyingly disgusting and rotting and crumbled while the living bits soared and stretched towards the heavens the way life ought to. gansey wondered what it would be like to camp here overnight, then wondered if that was allowed.

“say, should we have a permit to be here or something?” he asked parrish, who was a few strides ahead of him, leading the way along an unseen path. he walked carefully, like he too was being lead. if this whole thing turned out to be a hoax, it was at the very least a well executed one: a pleasure to witness, critics would rave.

“oh, i don’t know,” parrish said a minute later. “i never thought about that. it’s not a part of the national parks or anything.”

“are we trespassing private property?” this wasn’t necessarily a deal breaker, although gansey preferred to be aware that he was breaking the law before he did so, so as to better be able to plan an exit strategy.

“i don’t know,” parrish said again, sounding frustrated. “no one’s ever stopped me before. i guess i never thought someone might own the land.” he didn’t sound pleased by the prospect. gansey thought he understood-the idea of a stranger telling him to leave this place and never come back sat poorly within him. he noted this as sign that parrish’s magic forest might in fact be genuine. it was very rare that his intuition was wrong about this sort of thing. then again, it was a very lovely forest.

“this is where it’s easiest,” parrish said suddenly, stopping in front of a creek that gansey realised he had been hearing babbling in the background for quite some time. “i think the water acts as a kind of wire, sort of.”

“a conduit,” gansey offered, but parrish didn’t look pleased by this etymological helping hand. “i’ve seen evidence of that before. certain stones can have similar properties, when arranged correctly.”

“that makes sense,” parrish said with a private nod. he didn’t expand on this, even when gansey arranged his face to appear appropriately curious and engaged. instead, he scuffed his shoe against a mossy rock and sighed. “i guess you want to see how it works now.”

“please,” gansey said. he realised suddenly that he hadn’t remembered to turn on the emf reader, and juggled his accoutrements so as to correct this. the display lit up, flashing lights indicating the highest reading that could be measured, and then abruptly went dark. gansey was startled enough by the suddenness of it that he fumbled the reader. when he had finally regained his grip and righted himself, he glanced up at parrish, expecting to see that _oh this rube_ look on his face once again, but it turned out that the boy in front of him was too busy being consumed by the forest to cast judgement on gansey.

there was no other way to describe it. gansey’s mind offered up alternate phrasings which were immediately cast aside as insufficiently awful. vines and foliage were growing at a impossible rate, like the timelapse portion of a nature documentary, snaking their way up parrish’s legs and cementing his feet to the ground. there was water, too, flowing obstinately upward in the spaces between the vines, shimmering like glass. gansey was sure he was gaping, but parrish merely looked exasperated.

“not this again!” he shouted, and then he was choking.

gansey rushed forward to free him, but the greenery had only just reached parrish’s waist, and there was nothing he could identify that could be obstructing his airway. then gansey realised that it was a vomiting sort of choking, and he fought the urge to turn away. queasiness wasn’t a valid excuse for letting a person choke to death on their own bile. “breathe, man!” he said, thumping a fist desperately against his back, and parrish made a gargled noise, doubling over into a hacking cough that sounded once, twice, then once more.

resting where they had tumbled to the ground were three black feathers, slicked with saliva and other less palatable fluids.

“jesus,” gansey said. “jesus. are those crow’s feathers?” three crows. harbingers, omens, hungry for flesh and for justice.

“raven’s,” parrish said once he had caught his breath. he sounded unbothered. no, he sounded annoyed, like this was as pedestrian a setback as being stuck in traffic. he was still enveloped by grasping vines and running water. “does screaming at choking people to breathe usually work well, in your experience?”

“jesus,” gansey said again, because he felt it was worth repeating. “how on earth did you do this? is there a ritual? how were you able to make it happen exactly when you wanted to show it to me? you’re clearly not controlling it, are you? how will you get out of those, do you need me to cut you free? i think i have a knife in the car.”

“oh, eventually they’ll-” parrish began, and then brightness blinded gansey.

it was not a mystical sort of flash. it was just that the sun was out quite fiercely that day, and the treetops had been protecting them from the brunt of it until they weren’t anymore, because the trees were gone. the creek was gone, and parrish’s clinging captors were gone, and the air was empty of birdsong and richness and loveliness. all around them was a dusty bare field, as far as the eye could see. all that remained of the moment before were parrish’s sodden cargo pants and the feathers on the ground, clumpy and muddy now. parrish bent to pick them up, separating them with care and tucking them into one of the side pockets of his pants.

“i was worried this might happen while we were here,” he said.

gansey couldn’t breath. his mind was skipping, stuck like a record. he wasn’t sure if there had been trees at all. he knew for a fact there had been trees-he couldn’t have imagined that forest, couldn’t have conjured up the horror of adam parrish tangled in vines. insects buzzed agreeably about their heads, and he realised that his fingers had risen, unbidden, to rest on his left cheek. he lowered his hand, then raised it again to rest against his lip.

“has this happened before?” he asked pleasantly, and parrish looked at him strangely.

“not while i was in the forest. i’ve come other times and it’s been gone, though. i talked to persephone about it-persephone, she’s one of the psychics in town.”

“psychics in town?” gansey repeated, shock rendering him a politely incredulous performing parrot.

“i have a lot to show you,” parrish said, ominous and annoyed, and with that he strode off towards the distant gleam of the camaro’s windshield.

**Author's Note:**

> as you may have guessed, ronan is out there dreaming, causing cabeswater to disappear. i might continue this at some point, but i like where it's at right now. i wanted it to be about a gansey fatigued by incredible yet insufficient wonders, and also to examine what interactions between him and adam might look like if they met as gansey the distant businesslike researcher and adam the distant magical trainwreck


End file.
